


Welcome

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Series: Welcome [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Rumors, Season/Series 11 Speculation, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: In Wyoming, they spend the first morning with Emily.





	Welcome

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Season 11 casting rumors.
> 
> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

“Good morning,” she says when the two of them come downstairs.  “I made breakfast.”

The sight in the kitchen can only be described as a spread: there are eggs and bacon and pancakes and a large bowl of pristine-looking cut fruit.  “You didn’t have to do all this,” Scully says, wondering if this is normal in the Van de Kamp home or if she wanted to do something special for them.

“Of course I did,” Emily says.  “You’re guests.”  So that answers that question.  “Besides, I like to cook,” she adds, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Well, it looks great,” Mulder says.  “More of an actual breakfast than I’ve had in…maybe ever, come to think of it.”  Emily lets out a surprised laugh and hands them plates.

When they’re settled around the kitchen island with their food, Emily says, “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night.  Could you maybe tell me something about yourselves?”  Scully wonders if this is the kind of person she is: someone who likes to smooth things over, to say that they didn’t get much of a chance to talk without pointing out the reasons why, to make things better with breakfast.  But then she adds, “I remember a little bit, but not very much.  Well, I was only three, I guess,” and Scully reconsiders.  There’s more to it than that.  She almost sounds like she’s apologizing for not remembering more, and of all the shocks of the past twenty-four hours, that somehow seems like the biggest one of all: that her daughter, the little girl she couldn’t save and never thought to look for, thinks she needs to apologize to her.

“Of course,” she says.  “We can do that.”  She’s twenty-three, now; maybe they can’t catch up on all that time, but at least they can try.  Still, it’s so hard to know where to begin.  “Well,” she says at last, “we both work for the FBI.  Maybe you got that part.  And I’m a doctor, too.”

Emily nods.  “That’s neat,” she says.  “Should I call you Dr. Scully then?”

 _You can just call me Mom,_ a part of her wants to say.  She wonders if Emily wants her to say it too or if it would be too much, too fast.  She thought about this same question twenty years ago, deciding that Emily could call her Dana for now, hoping that soon enough—when the dust had settled, when they were back in Washington together, when she’d given Emily a sense of home—her daughter would want to call her Mom.  Right now, that decision seems as good as any other.  “Dana’s fine,” she says.

“Okay, Dana,” Emily says.  “And what should I call you?” she asks, turning to Mulder.

“Just Mulder,” he says.  She’d thought this part might be easier for him, at least, but he’s watching Emily with the same look of wonder and bewilderment that she suspects is on her own face.  They’d talked about it last night, alone in the guest bedroom.  _She would have been ours,_ Mulder finally said, _you know that,_ and of course she did, she’d always thought it, but somehow she’d never got around to finding out that he thought it too. 

Emily frowns.  “That’s it?”

“Yeah,” he says.  “I don’t really like my first name.”

Emily still looks a bit puzzled, but she nods and says, “Mulder, then.  Where do you two live?”

“Near Washington, D.C.,” Scully says.  “We have an old farmhouse—not working, though, not like this place.  We have a dog, too.  His name’s Dagoo.”

“Oh, I love dogs,” Emily says.  “What kind is he?”

“Not sure about that,” Scully says.  “We sort of found him.”

“You stole him, you mean,” Mulder says, and Emily looks back and forth between the two of them, clearly trying to work out whether this is a joke or not.

“He’s…it’s a long story,” she says.  “I can show you a picture of him, though.” 

“That’d be nice,” Emily says, and Scully quickly finds a picture of Dagoo on her phone—one of the rare ones where he’s not a blur—and passes it over.  “Oh, he’s so cute!” Emily exclaims.  “I really wish I could have a dog.  But we can’t have them in my building.”

“You don’t live here?” Scully asks.

Emily shakes her head.  “I live in town.  I work at the optician’s, you know?”  No, they don’t know.  Her daughter works at the optician’s.  For all the times she’s thought about Emily, imagined who she could have grown up and been, she’s never imagined this: there were too many possibilities to hit on the right one.  “So it’s easier.  But it’s still pretty close to here, so I come home a lot.”

“Do you like your job?” Mulder asks.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice!” Emily says.  “You meet pretty much everyone.  I don’t think I’m going to stay there forever or anything, but it’s a good job.”

“That’s great,” Scully says.  “And what do you like to do?  When you’re not at work.”

“Well, cooking,” Emily says.  “Like I said, I really like that.  I like to read a lot.  And I crochet.  I made these.”  She sticks out her feet, clad in purple wool socks. 

“Nice,” Mulder says.

“Yeah,” Scully says.  “They’re really great.”

“Thanks!” Emily says.  “I could make you something, if you like.  It’s pretty easy.”  She smiles.  “How about the two of you?”

As the two of them answer, Scully realizes, not for the first time, how much their lives are entwined with their work.  Even their leisure reading has something to do with it, most of the time; how many times has she sat on the couch with a medical journal, Mulder across from her with some old newspaper clippings about Bigfoot sightings?  She wishes she had something like crocheting, not connected to anything mysterious or dire, something that left you with a warm pair of socks for your pains.

At a pause in the conversation, Emily leans forward, her elbows on the island and her legs wrapped around her stool.  “I just wanted to say,” she tells them, “you shouldn’t worry about Will.” 

That feels impossible.  It always has, of course; last night just diverted the worries into a new channel.  Scully thinks about the closed door the two of them passed on their way downstairs this morning, the door with its sign reading WILLIAM’S BEDROOM KEEP OUT THAT MEANS YOU.  The sign was obviously old, done in faded crayon, and yet she couldn’t help thinking it was directed specifically at them.  “We just…” she begins, and then she breaks off, not knowing what she wants to say.

“You talked to him last night, right?” Mulder says.  “Was he…how was he?”  Scully presses his hand in hers, knowing he’s wondering, just like she is, if their son really hates them.

“He was still upset,” Emily says.  “But that’s what I mean.  You shouldn’t pay attention to all those things he said.  It was just because he was upset.  That’s what he’s like.”  She frowns.  “I don’t want you to think he’s usually that rude, though.  We were raised right.”  Then she makes a face.  “I know that sounds so strange.  They were going to harvest our cells, when the time came, but we have manners and I had ten years of ballet lessons, so that’s what matters?”  She looks like she’d be good in ballet, with those long legs that she certainly didn’t get from Scully.  “It’s a little more complicated than that, I guess, even though it doesn’t sound like it.  They really do…did…it always felt like they loved us, anyway.  Things were normal.  So maybe you can see why Will’s upset?”

“Of course we can,” Mulder says. 

Scully nods; they do see, even though that doesn’t make it hurt any less.  “It’s all right if you are, too,” she says.  “We don’t have to…I don’t want this to be the kind of thing where we all pretend everything’s okay when it’s not.”

Emily nods.  “Well, I wouldn’t say everything’s okay,” she says.  “This is going to take some getting used to.”  Scully is beginning to suspect that her daughter has a gift for understatement.  “But I’m not upset with the two of you, anyway.  This isn’t your fault.”  It doesn’t feel like that.  “I think it’s different for me than for Will, anyway.  He doesn’t remember anything else.  But I was eight when I came here.  I’d already been a couple of different places… It's not that I don’t feel at home here.  Mom and Dad always—” She breaks off, messes with her fork.  “Well, they said I was really shy when I came here, really closed off, but I opened up to them after a while.  But I guess…maybe I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, or something.  Not that I thought it was going to drop like this.”  She half-smiles.  “I think I just knew that things might not be permanent.  And Will didn’t, really.  He’s used to this one thing, which is good, in a way, because like I said, they really did take good care of us, and we were happy.  But it’s hard for him now.”  She pauses.  “Does all that make sense?  I’m not really the best at explaining.”

“It does,” Scully said.  “You explained it very well.”  There’s still a lot more that needs to be explained—on both sides—but it’s good for a start.  “We hope you know you can talk to us.  About any of this.”

“Oh, of course I do,” Emily says, and in spite of everything she’s been saying, her face is so open.

“Will you…could you tell Will that he can talk to us too, maybe?” Mulder asks.  “For when he’s ready.”

Emily nods.  “I will,” she says.  “Besides, he’ll have to come down soon enough.  He can’t stay in his room forever.  He’s always hungry,” she adds, her voice conspiratorial.  “I’ll put some of this in the fridge for him,” she says, jumping down from her stool and going over to the breakfast food, in which the three of them have barely made a dent.

“Here,” Scully says, “we’ll help you clean up.”

“Oh, no,” Emily says.  “No, the two of you sit and rest.  You had such a hard day yesterday.”  That understatement again. 

“We all did,” Mulder says.  “So let us help, Emily.”  The tentative way he says her name.

“Well…okay,” Emily says.  “But you really don’t have to.”

“We know,” Scully says.  “We want to.”  She smiles at Emily, who nods and starts putting the eggs into a plastic container.

“Thanks for your help,” Emily says, once everything is cleared away.

“It was no problem,” Scully says.  “Emily…you said you remembered a little bit about us?  Do you mind if I ask what you remember?”

She looks like she’s concentrating.  “It’s not a lot,” she says.  “Not really…I don’t exactly remember things about you, you know?  It’s more like images.”  She looks at Scully.  “Your necklace,” she says.  “The one you have on.  And I remember your voice, I think.  It sounded familiar last night.  When you were trying to tell us that things would be okay.  The same tone.”  She’s always done her best to reassure her children: Emily when she had lost the only family she had known or when she was so sick; William when he got fussy at night or when he was going away from her for what she thought was the last time.  Things hadn’t been okay then.  She hopes they can be now, but she’s still not sure.  “And about you,” Emily says, turning to Mulder, “I remember…”  She pauses, then contorts her face, her cheeks puffed out, her mouth scrunched in.  “You made that face,” she says, and then she breaks into a grin and a laugh.

“Yeah,” Mulder says.  “I think I did.”  He grins back at her.  Scully smiles too.

“Well, that’s about all,” Emily says.  “I don’t think I remember anything else. Maybe you can tell me about it, sometime.” 

“Of course,” Scully says.  “If you want to hear.”

“Sometime,” Emily repeats.  “Do you want any more coffee?  We could go sit in the living room.”

They carry their mugs down the hall, then settle onto the couches.  It’s not the smoothest process: Scully’s about to set her mug down on the table when Emily murmurs, “Do you mind waiting for a second…” and reaches out for coasters, and then there’s the tentative dance of who should sit where, if they should be side by side or if they should look each other in the face.  There’s a leg broken off an end table, evidence of last night.  There’s a sweatshirt that must be William’s thrown over a chair, but there’s no William.  “Do you have more pictures of Dagoo?” Emily asks.  “He’s so cute.”

Scully takes out her phone and scrolls through the pictures, explaining: there’s Dagoo again, there’s her and Mulder on a case in Wisconsin, there’s the house, there’s the yard, there’s Dagoo trying to eat a shirt.  Mulder leans over her shoulder on one side, adding commentary, and Emily leans in on the other, looking, asking questions.  She takes out her own phone after a little bit, and then she’s the one to explain: there’s her apartment, there’s her and her friends on her birthday, there’s her boyfriend (his name’s Steve, he works at an insurance company, and they’ve known each other since they were eleven), there she is trying to ski (“I’m really bad, though,” she says).  There’s a selfie, her and William, making faces.  “I could text you this one, Dana,” Emily says.  “If you’d like.”

Scully nods.  “Thank you,” she says.  She can’t say more.

“Give me your number,” Emily says, and when Scully does she texts the picture.  “You should send me that one of you guys,” she says, and Scully does.

It’s not everything, not yet, not even close to it.  But it’s something.  


End file.
